


The Long Way Home

by DarknessAroundUs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Southside Serpent Jughead Jones, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: Ten years down the line and Jughead is still in a gang. It’s just not the Serpents.





	1. The Middle of the Middle

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU Jughead grew up with Archie. Betty didn’t live in Riverdale and had no part in his childhood. Jughead joins the serpents at 18.

Jughead has been trying to quit smoking for nine years now, which means he has been smoking for ten years. A whole decade has passed and he can still remember his first cigarette behind the school. His tattoo was so new it hurt. Everyone was joking about something. He can’t remember what at first, and then he does. They were all laughing at him. He had inhaled too much, which had led to a coughing fit.

 

He had wanted so desperately to be cool back then, all the while insisting that he wasn’t. That was the only reason he picked up the habit in the first place, so that he could be part of the group.

 

Now he was at a pack a day, which was far from cheap. He had smoked two cigarettes just waiting for Cooper at the back of a bar two towns over from where he lived in Winterset, Iowa. The middle of the middle of nowhere he had joked to JB over the phone when he was reassigned six months ago. The last time he could talk to her.

 

He was leaning against his bike, looking at the moon, imagining how he would describe it in words on paper, when his phone buzzed with a single text.

 

**Too Dangerous. Rescheduled. Tomorrow Same Time. Red Barn.**

Cooper had sent it. Although her contact name is Dan. Just in case anyone spends time with this phone. Red Barn is one of the eight locations they had handpicked and code named before he went undercover.

 

If Cooper was scared he should be too. They had been at this for four years now, together as a team. He’d been skeptical at first. She looked too young to be in charge. Too soft. Not to mention far too polite and generous (no one in his line of work baked cookies for their co-workers, but she did).

 

But then Cooper had saved his life three times that he knew of, and now he trusted her with everything.  

 

He looked around the empty parking lot illuminated by the moon, still wet from the rain earlier in the day. He could see no one. That didn’t mean they weren’t there.

 

Jughead dropped his cigarette and ground it out with the sole of his Doc Martin. Then he got on his bike and headed out. An hour and a half wasted for nothing. If this was his first mission seven years ago he would have complained – hell he had complained - a lot. But now he knew better. Now he was more patient. One job took him three years. That was the hardest thing he had ever done. When it all went down in flames he felt like he had lost and not won. That was before Cooper though. Now his biggest disappointment was not seeing her in that dark parking lot.

 

When he arrives back in Winterset he goes straight to the bar, although he’d much rather go to sleep. He’s been in five different gangs now (thankfully they didn’t all require tattoos), and they all had the same sort of ratty hang out. This one is called The Bar but in his head Jughead calls it The Whyte Wyrm, the same thing he has called all of them internally. This gang is called the Bats, but in his head, he’s nicknamed it the End, because it should be, his very last gang.

 

He walks in through the door, orders a beer, flirts with Laura, who slides him a free shot, then he goes downstairs. Tom is there and Sam. Jughead is grateful that this club is not big on nicknames. He has enough names rattling around in his head already.

 

Tom and Sam are both counting out money. They don’t keep the drugs on the premise, they are not that stupid, but they do keep a lot of cash around, and the drugs aren’t far. They usually rotate them through gang members houses. Jughead’s trailer has already held them twice.

 

“Hey John!” They both greet him with a fist bump. Jughead sometimes forgets that his name is John. He doesn’t really like his cover name here, but John is generic – easy to remember – easier to forget.

 

“Hey.” he replies and because he can think of nothing more to say he takes out a smoke and offers them one. They both take the cigarettes. Everyone smokes in silence for a moment and then Tom asks Jughead if he’s ever going to ask Laura out.

 

He knows he should. They’ve flirted long enough, and this is one of the ways he proves he’s loyal, by actually connecting with people. By committing himself in one way or another. But he’d be lying if this wasn’t the thing that made him the most uncomfortable about the job, especially now (he might still call her Cooper for official reasons, but he thought of her as Betty).

 

“Yeah. Saturday if she’s not working.”

 

“She’s not.” Tom says with a wink.

 

“Am I?” Jughead asked. He’d started to do runs with them. Just across state lines so far, but he knew they did border runs sometimes. He wanted to be prepared for what happened next.

 

“Nope.” Sam said. Sam is the second in command. He’s taller than Jughead and weighs about 300 pounds. Neither of them scare Jughead particularly, and sometimes when he’s hanging out with them and their children or their wives he forgets entirely about what he is up against. That he’s just pretending to be part of the gang, that he should be pretending to care for them.

 

Alfred, his first handler had reamed him out for his empathy. Alfred tried to get Jughead to stop caring.  Cooper understands his impulse for empathy. But she keeps it in check. His empathy ultimately is with her, and that helps.

 

He wonders if she can see him right now. She has bugs all over the place that he doesn’t know about. He sees her so rarely these days, yet she sees him all time. He keeps a picture of JB on his phone and another on his laptop, but it would be too dangerous to have photographic evidence of Cooper anywhere.

 

“Can you go on the run for us next Tuesday?” Sam asks.

 

“Sure.”

 

“Aren’t you going to ask how long it will be?” Sam says.

 

“Why? I don’t have a family to get back to.” Jughead says, and Tom laughs.

 

“That is one of the reasons you’re going. But you should take a week’s worth of clothes.”

 

“Sure.” Jugheads heart rate increases, but he tries to keep any surprise from showing on his face. This time it will be Canada. “Who am I going with?”

 

“We haven’t figured it out yet.” Tom says with a shrug. Jughead doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth about this or not. Tom has every reason not to trust him. Still Jughead is a little excited. This is a step in the right direction. A step closer to this all being over.

 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m in.” Jughead said. Then the conversation switches to football (it’s that time of year again) and he automatically tunes it all out.

 

Jughead asks Laura out before he leaves, and she says yes, and kisses him right there in the bar, not even patient enough to wait less than 24 hours for the date itself. Jughead is flooded with guilt. He just doesn’t know exactly what the guilt is for – is it for fooling her or for betraying Cooper (Cooper who he can’t be with yet, Cooper who fully expects him to do this as part of his job as a DEA agent).

 

When Jughead falls asleep at night he dreams about growing up, about Archie and the treehouse, but at the end everything goes to crap like it always does, like it did in real life nine years ago.

 

When he wakes up at 10, he brews a pot of coffee. His trailer now is smaller than the one he grew up in, but cleaner. He only drinks for work. There is a six pack in the fridge and whisky on the counter, but that is only for appearances.

 

The trailer doesn’t feel like his, but he’s been undercover so long he sometimes forgets what he likes. He assumes any real home of his would have a lot more books, but outside of that, he isn’t sure.

 

He drinks the cup of coffee on the small front porch. He watches his neighbor Doris take her Jack Russel on a walk.

 

Jughead checks the time on his phone and that is when he notices the date on the calendar. October 7th. It’s been exactly nine years since his life changed forever. That morning had started out a lot like this one. With coffee on the porch of a trailer.

 

He didn’t have money in his bank account back then. He wasn’t undercover back then, he thought of himself as all in. If the Serpents had lived would they think of him as a traitor? Probably not, because if he they had lived, he would not have taken this path.

 

Nine years ago he had woken up on this day with a plan to take down the Ghoulies. A shitty, foolish plan, but he didn’t know that at the time. And it wasn’t really his in the first place. Toni had come up with it. But she’d convinced him that it was a good idea. His ex still had power over him, three months after the break up.

 

Although to be fair none of them were aware of the DEA’s involvement at the time. They were oblivious. The thought hadn’t even crossed Jughead’s mind, and for good reason. The Serpents weren’t involved with drugs, outside of weed. But the Ghoulies were dealing a lot more than jingle jangle.

 

Fangs had found out where the Ghoulies were supposed to be that night. They were spending time in an abandoned warehouse in order to sort out drugs for distribution. The idea was that Fangs, Toni, Sweet Pea, and Jughead would burn the place down, which would affect the Ghoulies profitability and force their hand.

 

They were outnumbered from the start. Sweet Pea was captured within minutes of them showing up, and they all would have died, if the DEA hadn’t intervened.

 

If Jughead walked into a place that smelled of drugs and smoke, he couldn’t stop himself from gaging, even to this day. Sweet Pea was dead and Malachi had a knife to Toni’s throat when the DEA burst in to the old warehouse, guns ready.

 

Only Jughead had hit the floor quickly enough, only Jughead had managed to army crawl his way out of there. Even going as fast as he could he got shot in the leg. When the DEA agent showed up the next day in his hospital room Jughead could barely meet his eye. The man was tall and blond. In his late thirties. He introduced himself as Alfred.

 

Jughead didn’t have handcuffs on, so he assumed he wasn’t under arrest. He didn’t know yet that Toni and Fangs were dead. Alfred told him that they were. After Jughead cried and mumbled about vengeance, that is when Alfred offered him a job.

 

At the time it seemed like the only way forward. The best option. Alfred became his handler for the next five years. They never got along. In all that time Jughead never learned to trust him. But he was a good handler in a lot of ways. He turned Jughead from a naïve kid into someone who could lie and do damage, someone who could survive.

 

Jughead was good at his job, because of Alfred’s training. But Alfred pushed him too far. He didn’t understand his limits as a person. The three year job that almost killed him, the one where he was undercover with the Scorpions, happened because Alfred didn’t understand a very basic principle of being a human. In three years you develop a rapport with people you work with every day. You care for them.

 

When he closes his eyes at night it wasn’t just Toni, Fangs, and Sweet Pea that he saw, but the faces of Clair, Theo, and Tracy, the kids of the people who had died when it all went sideways.

 

Jughead swore that the Scorpions were his last job. He was ready to quit. But after the agency fired Alfred, after they made Jughead promise after promise (more money, a desk job in a few years, a better 401K), he changed his mind and agreed to one more year. After he spent a year with Cooper, a year where he found out how good she was, he decided to do a few more, enough to secure that desk job.

 

Now this is it, the last undercover job. After this he can retire the leather jacket with the gang patch and hopefully the cigarettes. After all this time, there is no way he is giving up the bike. Although he is going to have to buy his own, the DEA paid for this one.

 

The day passes quickly, full of errands, plus a little bit of reading, and then he is picking Laura up for their date. Laura lives in a cottage nearby, a cute little bungalow with her mom. When Laura works the bar she wears all black, and tonight is no different.

 

They go out for drinks and burgers at a craft brewery nearby. Even the middle of nowhere had craft breweries now. The date is stressful for Jughead. Laura is asking him all sorts of personal questions, and he has to remember what the person he is pretending to be, John Thomas, would say.

 

Laura seems to have assumed that his nerves are just first date jitters, because she keeps talking about how nervous she gets on first dates. Although she doesn’t seem nervous. She talks about being a legacy and how strange that is.

 

Of course she has no idea Jughead was one. Even though the Bats are tied up in more illegal shit than the Serpents ever were, there are no teens involved, which makes everything a lot more ethical from Jughead’s perspective. Plus the inanition for the Bats didn’t involve brass knuckles.

 

At the end of the night, after making out on his bike for ten minutes, Laura asks to be taken home to his place.

 

Jughead turns her down as gently as possible. But she still looks at him like he is the world’s biggest cad so he uses a line he’s used before. It’s a shitty one, and entirely dishonest but it works. He tells her that he likes her too much for her to be just a one night stand. She flushes pink and kisses his cheek gently. Jughead swears in his head and prays that this job is almost over. That line only works once, in his experience.

 

After that he drives out to the red barn, or they called it that, anyways. It was probably red once but that was a couple of decades ago. He doesn’t like meeting here. If they get caught here it’s over. It is in the middle of nowhere, there is no logical excuse to be here but for a clandestine meeting.

 

He parks the bike outside, over to the side of the barn, near a blackberry patch where it doesn’t stand out. Cooper walks here from a distance, so her car is well out of sight.

 

Jughead enters through the side door. There she is standing in the center of the barn, looking at her cellphone. Her blond hair is in a bun tonight, and it reveals the lines of her neck. She is dressed all in black, he rarely sees her in anything else. Black blends in. She needs to do that in her line of work.

 

Her green eyes meet his and she smiles. It’s his favorite smile, the best.

 

“Hi.” She says shyly. The fact that this is there last job as a team has changed things between them. He kisses her deeply once and when he pulls away, she says “Not yet. Wait.” He nods.

 

“So, I’ve got my first real run coming up on Tuesday. I’m heading to Canada. I don’t know who with.”

 

“Good. That progress.”  

 

“Also I’ve started to go out with Laura, the bartender who is a legacy.” Jughead can’t help but blush a little when he says it. It’s awkward – Cooper is his something (special lady friend? Girlfriend? Lover? – none of the words fit, particularly since they can’t even go on a normal date till the end of this damn job) and Laura is work.

 

“That is great.” She says, with a genuine smile, but he notices her hands twitch a little, a nervous tic of hers.

 

“Do you think this will be over soon?” He asks.  

 

“I hope so.” She says.

 

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

 

“You know I can’t tell you yet.” Her eyes tell another story. But he just nods his head. “I can tell you that we are making progress. A lot of progress thanks to you.”

 

He smiles, but his lips feel stiff and uncooperative. “Any more updates?” He asks.

 

“Not on my end. Yours?”

 

“Nope.” Jughead says this time with a smile that covers his whole face. “Can we?” He asks eagerly.

 

“Just for three minutes.” Jughead pretends to pout. But he understands the logic. Betty starts a timer on her phone and then she kisses him, and he kisses back, and there is so much warmth and heat between him. He wraps his arms around her back and pulls her even closer into him. It feels so good, so right.

 

He traps her tongue with his teeth for a second, and she frees it and then they are back to lips. He can’t help himself, he starts to unzip her coat. Buzzzz. The timer rudely interrupts, and Jughead gives her two more almost chaste kisses.

 

“Juggie.” She protests and he lifts his hands away from her and raises them above his head as if she has just shouted hands up. Betty laughs. “We have to go.” He nods.

 

Jughead hates the three minute rule. It sucks. But they were breaking a lot of rules by kissing at all. This was Betty’s compromise. Her way of keeping them from going too far before the case was over. It was frustrating, but it was worth it, if the alternative wasn’t being with her at all.

 

He always leaves the barn first. That is the rule but he can’t help himself from shouting “To be continued” as he goes.

 

 

 

 


	2. The Run

 Jughead feels out of place in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, surrounded by families eating free breakfast. He is also eating the same free breakfast and food is essential for his well-being, but he knows he stands out in his gang jacket, his helmet by his side. Tom is dressed identically. All of the parents in the room and a table full of older men are giving them the stink eye.

 

Tom and he are going to take off the patched jackets before they hit the border and replace them with plain ones. It was habit that made them put on these jackets this morning, not a conscious decision.  

 

Jughead takes another sip of his coffee, wishing that the stares hadn’t put him on edge. He finds it hard to eat under these circumstances, but he still manages five boiled eggs, three waffles, whip cream, and two bowls of cereal.

 

Neither of them are morning people and it has actually worked out well to travel together. Tom likes to talk in the evenings over dinner, with little to no interruption (which Jughead gratefully provides – he’s actually found out a lot about The Bats as an organization just by nodding at the right moments).

 

The only downside is that Jughead is rather hungover. Tom kept insisting on shots last night, and his head feels like a hurricane is in there. Drinking is one of the lifestyle choices that comes with the job, like smoking. He doesn’t like it, but without it he would stand out like the DEA agent he is.

 

A woman walks past Jughead, and for a minute he thinks it’s Cooper. He feels both surprised to see her (he’s never run into her by accident while undercover) and also thrilled by the idea of seeing her even if it just in passing.

 

As the women gets closer it becomes abundantly clear that she is not Cooper. This woman has blue eyes instead of green, and her nose is much bigger.

 

Still she has blond hair that is pulled back and she’s wearing a soft pink cashmere sweater and jeans. The kind of clothes Cooper prefers to wear when she is not on duty. She’s athletic too, he can tell by the way she walks. In her hands are two Starbucks to-go cups

 

His eyes can’t help but follow her across the room. She does not stop at the breakfast buffet, instead she heads straight to the elevator. Tom laughs, and Jughead turns towards him, away from the blond.

 

“I figured out why you don’t like Laura.” Tom says with a smirk on his lips.

 

“What! Who says I don’t?” Jughead replies, fully aware that his cheeks are betraying him by turning red. 

 

Instead of answering the question, Tom makes a statement “You have a type and it isn’t Laura.” Laura is pretty. Jughead knows that objectively. She is petit with a bob of black hair and large brown eyes.

 

“What is my type?” Jughead asks. He honestly feels a little offended to be reduced to something that predictable.

 

“Tall, blond, conservative dressers. Basically, mom chic.”

 

Jughead takes a sip of his coffee. He’s attracted to Cooper. The fact that Cooper is all of these things, except the mom chic (whatever that means), is the reason he was looking at the women today, the one who has now disappeared, presumably up the elevator.  

 

He doesn’t think he has a type. He doesn’t remember noticing blond women before Cooper.   Still Tom might take sympathy on Jughead for this and ease up on the Laura issue, so he should probably not protest too much.

 

“It’s too early in the morning for this discussion.” Jughead says.

 

Tom grins, takes a bite out of a dry looking muffin and points at a redhead across the way.

 

“That’s my type.” He says, offhandedly. Having met Tom’s wife, Jughead is in no way surprised. He just nods and smiles.

 

An hour later, under a clear sky and in colder than expected weather, they are nearing the border. From Winterset to the nearest border crossing in Buffalo, NY takes a little over 8 hours on a bike.  But they are going to Montreal (or the suburbs in any case) so they are crossing over near Ottawa, and not Toronto.

 

Apparently, every time the Bats make a run they switch boarder crossings, so that is part of the reason this trip is so long. It will take Tom and he over 12 hours one way -  if they don’t hit traffic. They are on their second day and the trip as a whole will take 5 days, but that is with an extra day added on in Montreal so they look more like tourists and less like drug runners.  

 

They pull over at a Starbucks by the side of the highway. They switch jackets and Tom orders a Carmel macchiato and Jughead orders a shot in the dark. They sit in the Starbucks and finish their drinks in silence.

 

Tom goes to use the washroom and Jughead wishes for the thousandth time that he could just call Cooper, give her some sort of update. Just hearing her voice say hi on the other end of the phone would be terrific at this point.

 

But there are rules to runs like this one. The Bats insist that he doesn’t take a phone, a computer, or any other electronic devise.  Tom is using a map to navigate them to the drop.

 

The DEA also wants this mission to be a successful one, albeit for very different reasons. They could track Jughead’s bike easily, but because it could be a liability they don’t. The DEA wants him to be silent for the entirety of this mission so that is the plan.

 

He doesn’t know what Cooper is doing in his absence. She could be pacing a hole in the carpet of her office, or more likely she is busy handling someone else. Jughead knows he’s not her only agent in the field. Hell, he might not even be the only agent on this case. That’s how deep cover works.

 

Tom exits the bathroom and he grunts at Jughead. Tom’s nervous too, Jughead can tell by the way Tom’s hand keeps twitching. They make their way out to the bikes and pull their helmets on and take off.

 

Tom is riding a little faster than usual, forcing Jughead to follow. The speed takes the edge off. It forces him to concentrate on the road for a few miles till his mind grows accustomed to driving at this speed and his body takes over.

 

That is when he starts to worry in earnest, about the next part, the part where they actually cross the border. He’s done it before, plenty of times, but is always a gamble. Since Jughead is undercover the consequences for him are a lot less than the consequences for Tom.

 

If Jughead gets caught he’s not going to jail, there is just going to be a shit ton of paperwork, and red tape. The whole case goes up in flames and he’s trying not to think about that. He’s lost one case at the border before and he’s not prepared to lose another.

 

Jughead has a DEA issued fake passport (having government issued fake ID strikes him as funny every time he used it) and it is a quality fake, but he’s glanced at Tom’s and it’s not as real looking to him..

 

Tom speeds up again, and Jughead follows, passing an aggressive driver in a red truck, then a family in an SUV, and on and on, till Jughead loses track, he just knows that they have to slow down if they don’t want to draw the wrong kind of attention.

 

Jughead slows down gradually, and he hopes he doesn’t lose Tom, after all they have no way of communicating with each other. But thankfully Tom picks up the hint. Tom’s Harley starts to travel at a safer speed and they stop passing anyone.

 

When they reach the border, they wait in line together. Jughead’s bike first and then Tom’s. There had been a long debate, about separating versus staying together. But it makes sense for them to go one at a time in the same lane, because two buddies going on a long ride together is not unusual. It is a small crossing anyways. There are only two lanes open at noon on a Wednesday. So it would seem strange if they split up at this point.

 

This is the hardest part. Being forced to be still like this is unbearable. Jughead feels adrenaline pumping through his veins and he tries to look normal, like a man who doesn’t have a hundred thousand dollar’s worth of drugs in his bike.

 

The line is short but the agent is taking time with each car, so the wait is dis-proportionally long. Jughead glances back at Tom who is maintaining a surprisingly practiced poker face.

 

The van in front of Jughead drives up to the booth and Jughead is now the next in line. The red light makes it clear that he should stop. The border guard talks quickly with the driver of the van before waving him through. The light turns green and Jughead rides up to the booth.

 

The border guard is a middle-aged man with a military haircut. “ID” the man barks with no preamble and Jughead hands him the passport.

 

The border guard flips through it, scans it and then looks at Jughead “When was the last time you were in Canada?“

 

“About a year ago.”

 

“How long will you be in Canada?”

 

“Two days.” Jughead is a firm believer in only answering the questions asked of him.

 

“Are you traveling alone?” The border guard asks.

 

“Nope.” Jughead gestures at Tom behind him “My buddy and I are traveling together.”

 

“Where are you going to be? Where will you stay?”

 

“Montreal. In a hotel.”

 

“What is the purpose of the trip?”

 

“Adventure.” Jughead replies.

 

The guard nods and hands Jughead his passport back. “You can go.”

 

The knot of tension in Jughead’s stomach resolves itself, although not completely. It’s still a matter of Tom getting through too. Jughead drives across the border and finds a spot to park and wait and a little way’s down from the crossing. He can still see the crossing from there.

 

The guard passes Tom through quickly. Soon the burly man is by Jughead’s side with a huge grin on his face.

 

They arrive in Montreal in the darkness. It is now much colder than when they set out. Jughead feels like he packed insufficiently, and the first thing he does is buy a scarf.

 

Tom uses the phone at the hotel they are staying at, another Holiday Inn (apparently Tom is part of their loyalty program), to call their contact. They are back on the road within minutes. Jughead’s whole body feels exhausted. He’s not going to want to get on the bike at all tomorrow.

 

But they drive through the cold city to a suburb and find themselves outside an anonymous looking row house in one those artificial developments. Jughead has the Weeds theme song stuck in his head, even though what they are dropping off is much harder than marijuana.

 

The house they stop in front of has a For Sale sign out. They ride their bikes all the way up to the garage door and Tom raps on it three times with his knuckles. The door rolls up and Jughead finds himself staring at a man and a women that look like suburban parents. They both have brown hair, and a polished professional look about them. Tom would definitely describe the women’s outfit as mom chic.

 

‘Hello” the man says with a thick French accent. They enter the garage with the bikes and the door closes behind them.

 

Tom doesn’t know these dealers either, and he seems about as thrown off guard as Jughead. Instead of responding with words Jughead opens up the saddlebags of his bike and takes out the goods.

 

Tom is the one in charge, yet suddenly he is the one following Jughead’s lead. Jughead realizes that he has probably done this a lot more than Tom. Hopefully his experience isn’t showing too much.

 

There is a hot plate in the garage, and the man who has yet to give himself a name, heads over to it with one of the white cocaine baggies. He takes a little out in a spoon and adds a small amount of water. He heats the spoon up and after a minute he holds up a filter Jughead hadn’t noticed before and he pours the contents of the spoon onto the filter. Most of the contents stays on top of the filter (which is particularly fine mesh) and the man smiles “Très Bien.”

 

Tom throws Jughead a confused look and the man translates himself “Very good.” The women leaves, exiting through a side door into the house and she returns with a large bag full of cash. The large amount of cash is going to make the journey back across the border just as nerve wracking.

 

Jughead and Tom count the money and everyone nods before parting ways. Tom insists they drink way too much that night before turning in and the next morning they sleep through the free breakfast period, and don’t get out into the city till 12, both nursing coffees and hangovers.

 

Neither really knows how to play tourist. Jughead feels like he’s played someone else for so long he forgets what he likes to do, and Tom is used to being dragged to whatever his wife wants to do, so they both end up just walking for most of the day, with big hearty meals and a fair amount of drinking thrown in for good measure. The walking feels good after all that time sitting on the bike.

 

The rest of the trip goes easily, even with another round of white knuckling it over the border and long drives.

 

Once they are back in Winterset it is clear that whatever unofficial probation period Jughead was in, is now over. People talk openly in front of him. He helps with the drug processing. He sits in on every meeting.

 

No one pressures him to ask anyone out. He’s fairly certain Tom explained the situation to Laura, because she’s not so warm with him anymore, but she’s not pressing for another date either. 

 

He sees Cooper once a week and it is never enough. They’ve moved on to five minute timers but that hasn’t helped things, really. But they are at nine months of him being undercover at the Bat’s now, and he knows they have lots of evidence against the gang, so he feels like it is only a matter of time before he’s out.

 

And then right around the eleventh month mark they are doing a drugs for money exchange in the basement of the Bar. The other gang involved is much bigger, the local arm of a nation-wide outfit. Jughead leaves so that he can pee in the restroom when the DEA runs in.

 

Jughead had not planned it that way. No one had given him a heads up. The only clue he had was the ten-minute timer Cooper had set last time he had seen her.

 

But she had been watching over the video monitors and has taken advantage of his absence to stage the DEA’s entrance, in case the situation turned violent she wanted him out of the way.

 

When Cooper’s supervisor tried to talk him into one more contract, he just shook his head and smiled.

 

TBC…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at some point I promised to tell why Betty had joined the DEA. I actually wrote that scene and a whole chapter from her perspective, but it did not fit this story. If this story was a lot longer it would have, but I felt like because of the nature of the story and the length it just made sense to stay with Jughead, and I couldn’t have him talk about it without it seeming super expository. All this to say I posted the part about Betty’s motivations (and a little bit of a stand alone story for her – on [Tumblr](https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/). here. 
> 
> Also my goal is to post the next chapter in the next two days. 
> 
> Thank you so so much for all the thoughtful comments! They are greatly appreciated.  
>  


	3. The Things We Carry

 

 

Five year’s later Jughead is in a grocery store. He’s trying to decide if he should buy the honey baked ham slices, or the roasted turkey breast for lunch this week. All that Betty wrote down on the grocery list to guide him was “lunch meat”.

 

Jughead would like to say his life is different in every way then it was when he was undercover but he’s still smoking. In fact what he is really thinking about while he is trying to pick a lunch meat is how nice it would be to smoke a cigarette right now. It turns out some habits are harder to break than others.

 

He doesn’t drink very often though. It feels like a luxury to admit to friends that he doesn’t like beer. In the life he leads now he doesn’t have to worry about blowing his cover. He doesn’t keep whisky on the counter to maintain a reputation. Betty always keeps wine in the pantry, but it is largely used for cooking.

 

Betty is the biggest difference in his life now. For the first year they were together, when they were still both working for the DEA just in different capacities, he struggled with calling her Betty instead of Cooper. It was a hard habit to break, and even now that they have been married two years and her name is legally Jones he finds himself calling her Cooper sometimes.

 

When he first got together with Betty after all that time working together and the awkward purgatory of kissing with a timer, he still felt a little guilty about going on dates with her, spending whole weekends watching Netflix and spooning and reading and cooking and sex. It all felt like something illicit, even though she was no longer his handler. Even though they worked in different departments.

 

That is part of the reason he left the DEA though. That and the fact he found the desk job unbelievably boring. He doesn’t know how Betty isn’t bat-shit insane with the monotony of it. Although being a handler offers more variation than the position he had.

 

She accepted a promotion two years ago, but her job is essentially the same. Her work helped support him through four years of school. Her consistently and her love helped the most though. For the first time in his adult life he has figured out what he likes, what he wants to do, and it is because of her support.

 

He stuffs both the honey baked ham and the roasted turkey in his cart and heads towards the Greek yogurt. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a woman with dark hair turn suddenly to stare at him. He doesn’t like the feeling of her eyes on him, so he grabs one of the fifty different yogurt containers and throws it in his cart.

 

He keeps walking quickly, only stopping to review his list when he is the produce section. It feels absurd frankly – this feeling he has in the pit of his stomach, like a spider is there – is being caused by one glance at a woman. A woman who could easily just be a soccer mom. And even if she wasn’t – even if she was something more dangerous than that, Jughead was hardly a wilting flower. Spending almost a decade of his life undercover had led him to see many things he would never unsee, to do many things he tried never to think about.

 

Jughead is hunting around for the least ripe bunch of banana’s when he sees the women again. She was standing to his right examining the papaya options. She seems less ominous this time, though he doesn’t know why. She is clearly following him.  

 

She has shoulder length black hair and pale skin. There is something familiar about her. As if he knew her once.  

 

The women turns towards him and their eyes meet and it’s clear that she knows who he is. Even though he’s still fumbling through his mental photobook trying to find her. Trying to find anyone who looks like her.

 

He knows who she is as soon as she says a name “John.” Not his name now, but his last undercover name.

 

Shit. This has never happened before. He lives in Bolder, Colorado, a location far away from anyplace he had ever worked. But finally, his past, or rather someone from it, has come back to bite him. Or at the very least identify him.

 

“Laura.” He says. Her name seems strange on his lips. He never really knew her, and she really didn’t know him. But still they had spent a fair amount of time around each other once.

 

Jughead wonders if she has it all figured out, that all these years ago he was an agent not a biker. Although he is technically still a biker. He drove his truck here, but he still takes the Triumph he bought post DEA out once a week, weather permitting.

 

“You betrayed us.” Laura says. Her words are strangely calm, a stark contrast to her statement that feels like a knife sliding into his rib cage.

 

“I didn’t think of it that way.” It was his job after all. He was putting time in towards a paycheck, albeit in strange and unexpected ways. He was the one on the side of justice. They were the criminals.

 

“There are still good men in jail because of you.” A lot more than she was counting probably, given his track record. But he didn’t know what he could say about that.

 

“Good men who were doing bad things.”

 

Laura takes out her phone and snaps a picture of him. He doesn’t stop her.

 

“I want to make sure you can never go undercover again.” Laura says. There are tears in her eyes now.

 

“I haven’t done that for a long time.” 

 

“What do you now? Have you found another way to break people’s hearts for a living?”

 

Jughead can’t help but laugh. Laura looks at him as if he is being entirely inappropriate. Maybe he is. “I am a social worker. I work primarily with disadvantaged youth.”

 

“Oh. So I suppose that’s why you joined the DEA years ago, you are just a goody-two-shoes.” That is not how anyone would describe Jughead at 19.

 

“Not exactly.” Jughead replies, and he could give her his sob story, but he doesn’t think it is any of her business. He gets why she doesn’t like him, but he was on the right side of the law.

 

Laura looks at him like she wants him to say more, or if she wants to say more, but she says nothing and he has nothing to say. Instead she leaves, abandoning her half empty grocery cart in the isle and Jughead is suddenly tempted to yell after her, to ask if he should switch grocery stores or if she would. But he stays silent as well.

 

Still feeling a little shaky he finishes up his shopping and takes the grocery bags out to his truck. On the drive home, he finds it hard to think of anything besides what Laura said. In the last few years he has thought less and less about his undercover life but this was forcing memories back to the surface. He remembers with stunning clarity a joke Tom told once that made Jughead fall of his chair with laughter.

 

Tom was unquestionably a good guy in most respects, but the amount of drugs The Bats brought into and out of the country was significant. The strange thing about living a double life is that Jughead had became used to his friends going to jail. He had come to terms with being part of the reason they were there.

 

But the conversation with Laura, made him feel guilty in spite of himself. And strangely it made him miss the friends he had during that life, although not the life itself.

 

Betty had joined the DEA because she had seen first-hand the devastation drugs could bring. She had lost two family members to opioids. She had personal motivations to fight, to keep fighting. Jughead didn’t have that same motivation, maybe if he had it would be easier to not feel guilty.

 

Jughead pulls into the driveway of the blue bungalow he and Betty bought three years ago. He hauls the groceries up the steps and unlocks the oak door.

 

“Betty?” He calls into the house.

 

“I’m in the study.” she yells back.

 

He puts the groceries away and then goes upstairs. When they had found out they couldn’t have kids last year, they had turned the empty bedroom into a study/library/office that they could share.

 

The initial impulse was just to get fill up the room that made them sad every time they passed its emptiness. They had ended up creating their favorite room in the house. A place where both of them could find and share peace even after the hardest day of work.

 

One wall was lined with books, another with photos from their adventures riding across the country together. There were two desks, one that looked out over the street and the other that looked over the house next door.

 

Betty was sitting at the one overlooking the street, her laptop out, and she was typing on it. She had started writing poetry, but she insisted that she wasn’t ready to share it yet – she said ever, but he was hoping for that to change.

 

Jughead hugs her from behind and she smiles up at him.

 

“How was the grocery store.” She asks, and he can tell by the look in her eye, that she is expecting him to say something along the lines of same old, same old.

 

“Terrible. I ran into someone who knew me undercover, on my last job. Someone who knew me as John. Laura was her name.”

 

Betty closes her laptop and fully focuses her eyes on Jughead. “What?” He can tell she is in shock, so he repeats the whole damn thing over again. This time she is holding his hands. He is sitting on the desk facing her.

 

“I am sorry it happened. That is so strange.” Betty says, once the words sink in.

 

“It’s got me all jittery. Like I had too much caffeine or I saw a ghost.”

 

“The second analogy is more accurate.”

 

“I just know I did the right thing. I do. She just still made me feel bad about it.” Jughead said. He feels awkward admitting this out loud. But Betty’s eyes glow with understanding and her fingers squeeze his gently.

 

“What you did wasn’t easy. It’s different for me, it was then and it is now. I am on the outside of things. I never meet the drug runners and their families. I don’t spend days with them. I don’t drink with them. The closest I get to them before the arrest is the other end of a video monitor. That is a lot of emotional buffer.”

 

“It’s just that it’s been five years. I thought I was over this. I thought I had moved on.” Most of the time now he doesn’t even think of his old job. His mind is focused on the present, on the quiet life he has created with Betty, on school, and on the new job he’s just starting

 

Betty stands up and wraps her arms around him. She is warm, and her sweater is soft against his arms.

 

“You have. There are things from your past you will always carry.” He knows she’s right.

 

“Will you carry them with me?” He asks, looking down at her face pressed against his chest.

 

“Always.”

 

\- Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say parts of the end (Betty and Jughead not being able to have kids, Jughead going back to school) surprised me, but felt right, given the context of the story. 
> 
> I am always grateful for comments.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a weird little idea was supposed to be a oneshot but it kept growing. Who knows!
> 
> I am on [Tumblr](https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/). Though I have little time to use it.
> 
> I am so grateful for any comments or kudos!


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